The day before Justin Taylor posted about Eric Metaxes’ children’s book on Squanto, the Coalition blogger referenced an explanation about forthcoming changes in translations for the English Standard Version. The biblical words for slave — ebed (Hebrew) and doulos (Greek) have been particularly vexing to the Committee responsible revising the ESV. Taylor cites the Committee’s explanation for their current dilemma:
A particular difficulty is presented when words in biblical Hebrew and Greek refer to ancient practices and institutions that do not correspond directly to those in the modern world. Such is the case in the translation of ‘ebed (Hebrew) and doulos (Greek), terms which are often rendered “slave.” These terms, however, actually cover a range of relationships that require a range of renderings—either “slave,” “bondservant,” or “servant”—depending on the context. Further, the word “slave” currently carries associations with the often brutal and dehumanizing institution of slavery in nineteenth-century America. For this reason, the ESV translation of the words ‘ebed and doulos has been undertaken with particular attention to their meaning in each specific context. Thus in Old Testament times, one might enter slavery either voluntarily (e.g., to escape poverty or to pay off a debt) or involuntarily (e.g., by birth, by being captured in battle, or by judicial sentence). Protection for all in servitude in ancient Israel was provided by the Mosaic Law. In New Testament times, a doulos is often best described as a “bondservant”—that is, as someone bound to serve his master for a specific (usually lengthy) period of time, but also as someone who might nevertheless own property, achieve social advancement, and even be released or purchase his freedom. The ESV usage thus seeks to express the nuance of meaning in each context. Where absolute ownership by a master is in view (as in Romans 6), “slave” is used; where a more limited form of servitude is in view, “bondservant” is used (as in 1 Corinthians 7:21-24); where the context indicates a wide range of freedom (as in John 4:51), “servant” is preferred. Footnotes are generally provided to identify the Hebrew or Greek and the range of meaning that these terms may carry in each case.
The juxtaposition of the post about Squanto and this one about slavery were indeed vexing if not arresting. In the case of a Turkey-stuffed happy ending for Squanto and the Pilgrims, Taylor and the Co-Allies who read him were willing to overlook the enormities of Europeans’ treatment of native Americans, slavery (based on abduction), and death of a native-American village. But in the case of the nineteenth-century U.S. slavery, the Co-Allies cannot prevent the knowledge of white Americans’ treatment of African-American slaves from tarnishing these evangelicals’ reading of Holy Writ. I would have thought that the same stomach that could overlook Squato’s difficult life (not to mention his native American relatives’ lives for centuries to come) might also understand that the biblical references to slavery were part of narrative that resulted in an even happier ending — namely, the redemption of the world through Christ.
In other words, the sensitivity to questions of race and ethnicity at the Gospel Coaltion — if Taylor’s blog is any indication — appears to be selective bordering on arbitrary.
Just as troubling about this post and the translation committee’s discomfort over slavery is what this group of scholars do with the Bible not only when they translate but when they teach, interpret, and preach. After all, slavery in the Old Testament may be different from nineteenth-century American practices — I have no doubt that it was. But it was not any more pleasant or even rational (in the modernizing sense). If Abraham can “go into” his “servant,” Hagar for the sake of fulfilling the covenant God had just made with him, I am not sure that Old Testament saints were any more noble or inspired than Thomas Jefferson dallying with Sally Hemmings. And if just after Israel receives the very tablets containing the Decalogue, God instructs the Israelites through Moses, “If a man sells his daughter as a servant, she is not to go free as male servants do,” (Exod. 21:7), I am not sure that nineteenth-century masters were any more patriarchal than Old Testament patriarchs who sold their daughters into slavery.
The point here is not to bring the Bible down to the level of the antebellum South or to mock evangelicals who feel uncomfortable with the way humans beings treat each other — whether in nineteenth-century Alabama or the eleventh-century (BC) Ancient Near East. Confessionalists and pietists both get uncomfortable with slavery or other expressions of man’s inhumanity to man. Instead, the point is to avoid whitewashing the biblical text for the sake of contemporary race relations. The level of morality among the Old Testament saints was truly low (though I’d hasten to add that contemporary saints are not necessarily more virtuous). But if you read the Bible not for moral heroes or exemplary villains but as the story of God saving moral misfits, then you know that the Bible is not given either as blueprint or justification for contemporary social relations. But if nineteenth-century slavery looms as the most dehumanizing instance of masters’ treatment of servants and if biblical servants are simply forerunners of Squanto, then the most troubling and most glorious features of the Bible will surely be missed.
Old Life 